My thoughts: ESO is amazing

VMA Round 7 is seriously getting to me. Apart from the arena looking like feces its also pretty tough. Im getting nuked from all sides and the situational awareness required is rough. Im currently running through VMA for the first time and honestly dont understand why people say round 5 is tougher than round 7 - 4th round adds are way harder in this one imho. What makes this even tougher is the fact that this round is, as everyone knows, is RNG as ***. If you are a stam class the venomshots *** you up. If the flowers choose to spawn right next to each of them (happened a few times now) then GL getting to them. This spot is far from melee friendly. Im not complaining tho, keep in mind. Im on round 4, died around 20 times now, and came here to vent a little before going back in and finally clearing this round and hopefully the rest of the arena. At the same time I guess I can share my thoughts on VMA and the individuals complaining about its difficulty.

Before I continue, I want to mention that my character is currently CP 349 (stam sorc), so Im missing a lot of resistance/damage reduction and also am missing a good amount of damage. I also play on XBO, thus I have no buff/debuff trackers - when things get rough ie. the critical moments, I often find my critical surge running out (theres a pun in there somewhere). + obvious downsides to locked look sensitivity due to controller vs. mouse. These latter of these things don't really apply to you unless you are a PC player, but does apply to anyone high CP in general.

When I see so many posts complaining about VMA, I see often the reasons for this are that 1) the player does not believe he can complete it or become good at it 2) that it the arena is too tough 3) that it is solo and shouldn't be or 4) that it drops gear which is too good and that there should be other ways of achieving this gear.

1) Having low CP is a huge cripple for this arena, and the higher the CP the easier it gets. VMA mechanics and adds will nuke you non-stop and deal very high damage, the more CP in resistances the easier it will obviously get. At the same time, the quicker you kill things the easier it is, and so CP in blue constellations here. Another thing which weighs heavily into how well you can do is the gear. Getting the appropriate gear for VMA is often crucial, as it should be. For a stam class, vicious ophidian is a set which you really want, a set which drops from normal trials and which can be a grind to get (especially the jewelry, which you should try and get but can do without). There is nothing wrong with farming for appropriate gear to clear VMA however, which is arguably the toughest content in-game besides vet trials, and subsequently drops the best weapons. It took me a good while to finally get my VO jewellery and now that I have it I can move onto the next content in line with character progression. And now zenimax made it even easier with the ability to trade BOP loot in group. I personally started doing the arena at CP260 and got to round 3, came back at 300 and got to round 5, and now that I am 349 and finally have the gear setup I wanted and farmed for (albeit bad traits), I believe I can finish it and without swapping CP points around.

If you dont believe you can become good at it, I think you are wrong. Anything you do as a human being you become better at with time and practise Eventually it will not be as bad, no matter how rough it is at the start, especially with VMA.

And of course now you have a lot of resources like guides and walkthroughs which teach you about the mechanics or where you can just see how more experienced players clear the stages.

2&4) The arena is tough but it should be. Its requires survivability, situational awareness, as well as knowledge of your class and build. All these same things apply in vet trials and any other tough eng-game content. Having a game adjust to the ever-casual player will never be a solution. If you want to be that much more effective, you should work for it imho. If you think the gear which weapons are too powerful, that I can not really combat much apart from saying that I on cp340 down bloodspawn (1,5mln hp) in 65sec (best time). Gear setup for this was TBS, velidreth 2x, agility 3x, leki 2x. I have also acquired the mazzatun skin and the hist shadow title. I think I could already be effective to an extent in at least some of the vet trials, and especially if I hit max CP. Getting VMA weapons is the next step, but you dont need them to do well.

3) I am personally glad that VMA is solo and I think this is one of the things zenimax did very well. Even though the game is an MMO, it does not in any way mean that all dungeons and content should be for groups. You should be able to work in a group as well as alone when you have to. Adding to this many players dont have much time to play at the same time as others, or simply dont have a good group to play with. Having variety between solo & group is good for sure.

Having said all this, these are just my thoughts and Im sure many people will disagree with these things or my pov in general and I respect that. But I also feel like nerfing the content only works towards killing the game, in any game. ESO is amazing (apart from quality issues like servers and bugs), and there are loads of ways to enjoy it casually. But if you want to have the BiS gear and as effective as the game allows you to be - then adjust to the game. Dont ask the game to adjust to you.

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